A Memory Of the Party

I entered my study, closing the door and leaving the cacophony of living beings outside my door. It sealed so tight and so completely that only the thoughts and emotions of my siblings could enter, here not even the pipe of the tiny organ reached. I opened a book and thumbed through, one I had no doubt read a few thousand times. Some books on ancient glyphs and possible translations through the ages of man. It was a fun book I loved the art and lines that lay inside. Still, the question itched at the back of my mind as I thumbed my way through it again not noticing the glyphs, the text or even the pictures. The paper was soft, worn from years of thumbing through it, the oils from my skin leaving the pages dog-eared from my use. I felt the warm weight of it in my hands. My room was growing as a new tree sprouted up, aged, bloomed, bore fruit, and climbed higher and higher. Then shrank again as the tree grew old, and its trunk snapped and fell to the ground. Mushrooms spouted on its bark, ants and other small things rooted around in the dust and debris that started to litter the mossy floor. Soon spores flung themselves into the air in the cycle of a mushroom's life and the room shrank again as the fallen trunk and stump decayed back into the soil it was born of. Only the tree was outside of the room at a normal time, the pond, the grass, and moss, the furniture untouched by its hypercycle in time. I hardly noticed as it happened. What would be strange in the human world, noticeable in the human world was just another faction around our home. It was nothing distressing, it was nothing noticeable for us. When you've lived as long as us, seen the happenings shock becomes a faint memory, a cute notion. Still, it gave me an idea. 'Schroom trolls cared about the ground they called home and the spores they all produced.

Karen came into my room, she had changed into something simple and plain. Though she had her true form exposed. Her height was considerably compared to her human stature. Her ivory skin had a dark undertone and her blue streaks flowed over her skin. She sat next to me and held up a cup of tea for me. The thick aroma of earl gray and Bergamot washed toward me. Hints of sweetness in its company. A tray of sweets and sandwiches came out of her pouch at her side. She set it down with a smile on my side table. "Tea time." She exclaimed. It was her favorite British tradition and even though she cheated every day and used spell work and essence to conjure up the treats she at least made the tea from scratch. Though how hard was it to boil water, and add a scoop of tea? I also preferred the conjured food to hers, like our mother before her, Karen was a horrible cook. As I picked up a scone laden with jelly and fresh butter I remember our mother attempting to cook stew. She cooked and cooked the food until all the water was gone, and still she cooked it. Finally after hours of playing and waiting and waiting more, she called us all to eat what was a lump of mixed greens, veggies, and meats that had become a solid mass that our best Ullu couldn't cut. So grandmother to the rescue with boiling dry fish and fresh greens.With seal oil and blueberry leaf tea. Poor Stella, she tried at everything she did, but if it wasn't essence or magic related she couldn't accomplish any task as well as other hunters or makes. She strived despite it and her essence work, her ability to create was unparalleled. She could help create life almost as well as the Gods themselves and jokingly did it almost as often. "What are you thinking about brother?" She asked me between bites of cookies and sips of tea. "How would you track a spore, do you think sister?" I replied. If anyone knew other than Robbie it would be her. She may have been shy in public, shy in the study,shy in everything but she had a better head and ability than most. Even among us that never age, never die. She could summon, conjure, hex, spell weave, and potion mix not just as well but better than almost any being in any of the realms and her ability to teach is without equal. What she lacked in social grace she made up for a hundred times over with sheer wits and an ability. Her steely grit and courage in the face of danger and classmanship was par none the most bravery I've ever seen. I'd like to say I'm braver but in truth, nothing really mattered to me and how can a person be brave if even fear didn't matter? I cared about everything, everyone, I just didn't care about my life and if I don't care about my life then I can't really be brave in the face of danger. It made me an effective fighter, and it allowed me to give 100% of myself to whatever cause there was at hand. I only falter when the lives of others I care about fall on the playing field. "So you seek to find a spore in a world of life. A new life that thrived on death and decay?" She raised an eyebrow at me and smiled. "The real question is how to find it?" She added

"First you need to start at the beginning, which is easier said than done." Karen grinned, her smile a little more like Matt and David's mischievous grin. As mischievous grins went it was tame, a little unsettling to see on my younger sister's face but still cuter than it should be and honestly one of her more menacing looks. She reached out with her essence and called to her room for a large volume of books and a startling number of items she seemed to think she needed. "Could we maybe move to the common study and see what other siblings might join us?" I asked her and her stacks of books and trinkets vanished in a huffy puff and so did we. There we are in the thick, among stacks and more stacks, going back and forward and wide as the eyes could see. Karen's little bits and pieces that bobbed and swirled and puffed around us made noises of different natures. There was a horn that sounded like a train, a pane of glass that howled like a werewolf in the night, a whistle that whispered sweet nothings in the night, and a bell that sounded out like a lighthouse in a stormy night. Honestly I don't think half these expressions helped in any way other than levity and distraction. Two sisters seemed to think that they were needed for any kind of investigation. "Larry!" Karen yelled into the stacks and whirling purple puffs of smoke and steam whirling around above our heads. With an angry stumble down the stairs, each banging and slamming as they got closer, it was full of such false anger that even caused the gayety of the pixie soiree and its pipe origin music to stop if only for the briefest of pauses. The giant door to the common study opened with a smack against the wall, a sound hard enough to crack the plaster wall. The lion figure on the door roared deep and harshly several of the book gnomes winced and dropped some of the books they were replacing to the stacks. Book gnomes weren't gnomes made of books nor gnomes that come from books but gnomes that lived mostly in studies and libraries across the realms. During the day they looked like statues of putti, cherub-like creatures minus the wings and small statues that went forgotten in dark knocks and basements of studies and libraries all over Earth. Unknown to most library employees librarians were book worms, actual worms the size of a person who dressed and played the part of librarian men and women throughout the day, and the statuetts and putti taking to caring for the books and hidden rooms and many oddities that mortal beings were unawares of. Putti were there to greet the wise women and men that sought out book worms to help learning from forbidden books and scrolls and text that were kept out of the sun and away from unprivileged eyes. If humans ever wondered why librarians always looked older than they should be or more plainly that any human had a reason to be it was for reasons enough. Hiding in the human world had become the only way book worms and books gnomes could make human money and barter for the rare things that they were in no way prepared to hunt for or search for. Other then knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge were their bread and butter, in some cases literally. Not to insult them but other than giving, seeking, and consuming knowledge, and hiding in plain sight in human suits were among bookworms most dominant as well as strongest gifts. Book trolls spent their entire lives helping and looking after book worms.

As the load bang rang out over the study and echoed deeper and deeper into the stacks, House stitched and wove the fabric of its plaster back together without any hint of a grudge against Larry." WHAT! What do you want?" He again was covered in his dark purple rags and sweat. He lunged down from the attic and without the slightest hint of ceremony demanded what she wanted. I suspected nothing of any real importance but more just to annoy our eldest brother."I want my scrolls back, you took them over a hundred years ago and I know it was you!" Karen snapped at him with ounces of venom she could muster. "who else would take an entire century of scrolls on wartime love ballads and sonnets?" Larry looked her down like he eyes were the barrel of a gun. His scowl deeping even further into had already creased face. "Right here, and brother if you tell anyone you will surfer, maybe not pain, maybe not sorrow but we all have hidden parts we'd rather not have others know." Larry threatened me. I know he knows secrets of mine that I would rather not see the light of day. He is our eldest brother. As he turned to storm out of the room just as he came in, back to his den of armor and weapons to punish himself further for a cause we didn't understand. A group of scrolls fell at Karen's feet in an unceremonious pile. Karen stuck her hand down into the group and fished around in search of one scroll out of hundreds. Whether by the nature of essence or the nature of years of practice the scroll seemed to jump into her hand.

"Ahh the war of the 'Shroom Trolls and the Forest Elves Seeking Peace." She translated the title of the scroll as she opened it and spread it out over the table. The scroll was pounded papyrus, hand pounded, not rolled. Showing just how old it really is. "So how is this going to help us?" I asked, unsure of what old ballads about a war had to do with the matter at hand. "These aren't just war ballads, it was a love war, or rather a war about love. The old 'Shroom Trolls before they died off or were killed off. Our friend Pogs was the prince in the story and there is a detail that might be helpful, I think." Karen smiled at the scroll as her fingers danced over the glyphs on the page as her finger and hand passed over them sparks of essence danced around the page with sprinkles of white, red and blues all mixing into light purples as the magics blended together. "You see Pogs was contracted to marry Tessa, long before she was known as Tessa, she was still the Mother Tree. Pogs being young and wanting to be a good son he convinced himself that he was in love with her. She used every trick in her bag to create that love. The night before they were to be wed she rested and deeply as to have fresh new blooms for her seven or eight hundred wedding. As she did her other half, her male side woke up to wonder at the night sky and Pogs had come to introduce himself to what was meant to be his brother-in-law/Male married counterpart. No one knows for sure what was said but he made an impression on Pogs, one that has never before or sense. Pogs fell for him and nothing could be done about it." Karen expanded on the story between the night and the day of the wedding but I lost track of what she was saying, I pondered my lost loves.

I've always been a man who loves the affections of other men. Again not uncommon in our tribe or our people. Until modern days I had to hide my love affairs and for the last couple of centuries among the human world. It seems that in the European parts of the world the idea of same sex couples went in and out of fashion, more out than during all that time. It hasn't been until the onset of the twentieth century that couples that differ in any way from that of the average person, was a relationship able to be shared in the light of day. It was nice to walk around places like London, Ireland, Scotland, and Whales to see what is now called gay men and lesbion women hold hands in public, to share the affection of a simple kiss. What were known as third genders had now been split into many facets, cut like diamond or emerald. Each unique and precious in each individual way. In-fact the celebration of the diverse nature of humankind in the modern era was almost worth watching the heartbreaking stories that spanned the last couple of centuries. Even if so many of those stories were sour meals to consume they were stories acted out and told before us and like any other story they served a purpose. Much as it turns out the story of of Pogs, the Mother of Trees and the war of the 'Shroom Trolls, had been. If it weren't for this story, for this scroll now feeding our minds and providing us essence we wouldn't know where and how to find Tessa now. I always wondered why the Gods and Goddesses would choose New Fandland as the birthplace of life on the planet, though it was so long ago that all the Earth was one mass, one single land. Though plant life started in the northern portions of land. Humanity came out of part of its southern portions. That day would be much much longer amount of time that in plant life was a simple changing of the seasons.

"Brother! Jonesie! Tocktoo! Are you listening to me?" Karen was shaking me by the shoulder as she yelled at me. I must have been deep in thought because I hadn't heard her call to me. I only came back to the world because I could feel her mind pressing against mine with all its force. The essence of her voice pressed in on my walls with the force of a hurricane or a crashing flood. "Sorry, I was wondering about how often my story of love had been the sustenance for another's budding relationship no matter how fleeting it might have been." I shock away the cobwebs of memory as I answered her. It was well known by my family that I was not just picky with the gift of my heart, I was downright fickle. Karen skipped over any questions she might have been cunning enough to ask otherwise. It amazes me how among family, with those we have known the entirety of our lives and soul, how one simple look could tell all the stories we shared and with that look a silent communication full of both compassion and pain, hope and sorrow. I would miss that instant silent connection with my family more if it were gone then I could ever imagine missing the affections of a partner in life."So what beginning do you think we need to start at then Sis?" I asked, settling back and ready for her to lead me down a path of winding logic.

Karen pulled her memory stone, during the party there had been a master stone set to multiple vantage points and being much larger and much more powerful it was able to record not only sight but sound. The master stone sent imagery and sound to everyone else's smaller stones in the area near the much larger channel stones. By passing the stone from one side or another facet the stone could switch between views and conversations of everyone and all the sounds near the master stones. When my family came home and shared the memories with me I shuddered at the thought of how much energy was spent to not only create those stones but to maintain them through the entire party. Smaller stones like ours were a passive system and drew on our essence over time but larger stones like that at the party would have taken so much more energy, so much raw power to force them into being memory stones and into projecting what they observed to everyone at the party must have been months of sacrificing one daily magics or one of the rare source stones. I mean Tessa had stores and stores of energy at her disposal, with her sleeping half she could call on even more as he didn't use his most of the time. The Mother Tree didn't like to spend so much of her energy on frivolous things as those things would happen more and more throughout her life so small swatches of time meant nothing for her to remember and even less for her to expend resources on. Source stones were rare, each world only had a set number of them each and though they held vast and great amounts of energy even they had limits, and sadly once used and empty source stones didn't replenish or regain any energy they just lost the life glow they normally had. "So many and such large memory stones sister, how were the fey so comfortable around them?" I asked as the flicker of light started the projection of the night into the room in front of us.

It turns out there were benefits to going to high society parties even in the Fey realms. There was a great deal about the events of that night that I didn't know. I had been invited, I remember the invitation arriving at my window. Tessa or the Mother of Trees at the time had sent out Goldfinches with parchment made from her own bark as invitations. One morning as I sat enjoying a cup of Tea, coffee existed back then, though it was drunk mostly by Southern races of humans and not yet had the boom it shared in modern day human society. I could have used spell work to bring myself coffee back then but tea suited me just fine. Besides, explaining to human visitors what it was at the time wasn't worth the magic needed to procure it. House was much smaller on the exterior, our land wasn't in the North Eastern portion of the Americas yet. North Eastern America wasn't North Eastern America yet either. The local peoples still worked and lived on the land back then. We didn't have to hide as Native peoples still had a close relationship with the magical realms and the Fey people hadn't yet had to displace into worlds yet to be created. The land was fertile and strong yet to be besieged by overcrowded cities and expanses of highways and freeways with splatters of towns and stops that created the vain work of American streetways. We still lived in the cold northern plains of tundra, in our settlement by the river hugging the river. We used waypoints to cross the land and across seas and oceans to help lead and heal the places and beings that needed it, House had been modest and yet to grow into full power. Though we had locked doors and windows long before other local peoples without mystic nature the glass wasn't questioned, the iron clasps of the door didn't phase our local family. I felt my essence leaking out of my mind and broadcasting to the local area," Would you say that Iron on the chest was about the same age as House was when we lived by the river still?" I asked, knowing full well she had heard my mind's question before I spoke.

The party was said to be full of every notion of magic possible. The boughs of trees sway with unfelt breezes, the canopy of them lit with tiny sparkling lights as if the stars had fallen down into the branches just for this one occasion. Sprites and Pixies danced and let unknown flowers, all imagined to bloom under their feet and into the air like living sweet scented confetti. The dark world was split by warm orange and yellow lights,the night split like a curtain as if darkness didn't dare follow the party under the trees. Birds and squirrels, frogs, mice, moths, all manor of nature intermixed during the safety of the party. So many fey beings in one place meant safety for all creatures in the valley that night.

So many different outfits with so many different styles, most were wearing expressions that looked fashionable but no doubt had a variety ways of protecting or attacking anyone at the gala. From the Fey born bloodlines there were expressions that looked like tailored tuxedos and dresses that could have been the cover photo for magazines from the 1920's to the modern era. There were flapper dresses with pearls that almost touched the floor, ball gowns that had lace and velvet. There were shiny fabric dresses for what looked like 1980s prom dresses.

Others wore suits with long tails dressed as if ready for a dinner party in 1910, some with white bow ties. Still more had long robes in deep blue, and blues, as well as greens. Some with ties, bow, or clasps in gold or silver, others made of black onyx. A Earth Troll was clad in in patches of dry clay and wet clay, laid out with patterns that swirled in places, it was in checks in another. The wet clay ozzed, flowed, and seeped around, over, and under the patches of dry. As it passed the dry clay was left with new groove, new patterns. Some looked like moons, other could be clouds or a symbol for wind. It changed so fast it was like looking at a flip book of still photos creating a movie.

There was Pog, alone in a corner. Smoking his Billy Weed and downing a couple points of honey ale and Hinkelberry wine. The honey ale was a gift from the 'Shroom Trolls but the wine was brought by Craddel Birds. A race of creatures that lived high in the Shifting Mountains. few things grew there, there were only fewer things to eat but Hinkelberries grew on the crags of rocky cliffs and between the cracks in the mountains face. The berries grew year round thanks to the never changing weather and stable temperatures the Shifting Mountains were widely known for.

The wine has a kick that even Fey folk could afford to overlook. Just a few glasses, and anyone fey, human, or God would end up on their back side watching the world spin out of control, grasping for up and down or left and right. It wasn't without its funnier side for the drinker and onlookers alike. Most had a few already, combining Honey Able, Hinkelberry Wine, and Billy Weed. Let's just say his night would be a blur soon. It was fun when Pigs let loose, he could dance a Jig better than any Irishman, it helps that his people help develop the dance in concert with the Leprechauns clan. The two races were so close that they married into one another families, though the make up of their magic, the nature of their essence that no children ever resulted from their union. Watching through the view of the memory crystal Pogs looked not just forlorn but sad and lonely. It's the night before his wedding and he was crammed into a hollow, in a corner all alone. Sure the party swirled and danced around him, and party voters greeted him and wished him luck on his upcoming day, he smiled and waited back. Still he looked distant and sad.

As the night wore on, and morning approached many guests started to thin as more and more guests found their huts, grown from beechwood nuts to each being's specific needs. Tall and deep for larger guests like the Boulder Giants who came down from their cliff side homes along the beaches of the world, or shallow and long for the Sepintain who built their homes or if driftwood logs. even the light and shadow fey had special accommodations. The two people lived in connection to one another but in vastly different worlds, it understood that one created the other but never touched. Their huts were shoulder height but filled with holes and slates, cracks and beams that split between and around one another but never fully separating the room. As light danced and twinkled through the room the many surfaces made room for the shadow they cast to twist and slither against the floors and walls that give them dimension in contrast to the light's absence.

As the creatures that had danced and drank, chatted and sang the night away, retired, the many trees of this mighty Grove did a final bow for the night, capping their performance off as the grand hall for the night. they twisted and wound their branches all at once. As they twisted their leaves fell to the ground like feathers freshly melted from a great green bird, they littered the ground in a thick carpet like jade, before instantly drying, aging into dust to be absorbed by the Earth and stored for their next command performance. As I looked up with the memory stones help I saw the stars of that long ago NewFoundland. There in the sky was an older version of the night sky, it hung in the horizon like a treasured work of forgotten art. The sigil on the trunk. `it is a constellation! From Earth, the human realm," I exclaimed. Just so far in the past that nothing living, nothing Human, Fey born or otherwise would recall it. it was a memory only the Earth and its direct children would remember. "Sister, I knew Tessa was aged and lived before any walking creature but I never imagined that the Gods set her down just as the earth cooled." I was soaking to my sister of course the only other person in the room. During our time with the memory stone the Glen of my quarters had transformed again. A rising knoll had formed across the pond, the result of yet more trees and bushes being born, growing old, and giving way for other generations of biodiversity and winds gathering the dirt as if it were creating a giant ant hill that sloped lazily down to the pond's end.

How did you remember such a small detail from that night Karen?" I asked her knowing full well that she rarely if ever forgot anything. I was impressed and thankful beyond words , so, thinking to myself carefully to keep my essence and mind shut to the world, we knew where the sigil came from but where in NewFoundland would we find Tessa, she had grown portals around the realms, allowing everyone to join the party. still knowing two pieces of information making tracing a spore with magic, much more possible now. Our chances were much better finding clues to much bigger questions now.